iTunes movie rentals be damned, the real star of today’s Macworld 2008 keynote (aside from a familiarly-dressed Steve Jobs, naturally) was the Macbook Air, which Apple is touting as the “world’s thinnest laptop.” Comparing the device to Sony’s familiar ultraportable TZ, Jobs noted that the thickest part of the Air was still thinner than the thickest part of the Vaio.
The Air measures 0.76 to 0.16-inches thick, compared to the TZ’s 0.8-1.2 inch width, and still manages to pack in an iSight camera, full-sized keyboard, and 13.3-inch display, at a weight of 3-pounds (compared to the lighter 2.7 pound TZ). The keyboard sports an ambient light sensor, while the touchpad is gesture-based.
Inside, the device packs an 80GB hard drive, optional 64GB SSD drive, 2GB of RAM, and a standard 1.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor (which can be upgraded to 1.8 GHz). As expected, the Air skimps on the internal optical drive, but users can shell out $99 for an external SuperDrive.
The battery life clocks in at an estimated five hours.
The Macbook Air will be available in two weeks for $1,799.
Check out the full keynote here.